Abysmal Ratings for the American Country Countdown Awards
Monday night (12-15) was the inaugural airing of what is attempting to be country music’s 4th awards show called the American Country Countdown Awards, or ACCA’s, and the ratings couldn’t have been worse. Replacing the American Country Awards on FOX which ran for three years, the ACCA’s are an extension of Cumulus Media’s American Country Countdown program, a weekly syndicated radio show hosted by Kix Brooks. Hoping to put more muscle behind the production, Cumulus and FOX also brought in giant awards show apparatus Dick Clark Productions—the company behind the ACM Awards and other live broadcasts. However DCP and a big media push prior to the awards couldn’t account for an overcrowded awards show space and a lackluster presentation, and the overnight ratings for the show were abysmal.
Ratings for the FOX-aired show came in at 0.9/ 3, good for last amongst all major networks, and down an embarrassing 21% compared to last year’s ratings on the same night. The show pulled roughly 3.48 million viewers during the two-hour presentation. Compare this with 2013’s American Country Awards numbers, which aired on a Tuesday (Dec. 10th) and were already considered deplorable, the awards show shed over 1.6 million viewers, or roughly 33% of its viewership year to year. The overnight ratings for last year’s show were 1.4/4.
Thanks to Windmills Country for help running down the numbers.
The 2014 American Country Countdown Awards exposed hosts Florida Georgia Line as having little to no skills in timing or pentameter. At one point the presentation came out of commercial break, showed FGL’s Tyler Hubbard standing on the stage with a large camouflage duffel bag slung over his shoulder. FGL member Brian Kelly said to Hubbard, “Hey Tyler, I have to say you have a large sack.” Hubbard responded, “Yeah, it’s nuts.” And that was the extent of their joke.
With the resounding success of other country awards shows such as the long-running CMA Awards every November, and the ACM Awards in April, FOX, Cumulus, and Dick Clark Productions may keep at their task to launch a 4th franchise (the 3rd being the summer’s CMT Awards), but so far over a four-year span, the experiment has not fared well whatsoever.
December 16, 2014 @ 11:14 am
Bwaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! And somewhere, Bob Kingsley is laughing even harder.
December 16, 2014 @ 12:41 pm
How embarrassing.
December 16, 2014 @ 12:53 pm
I pulled the plug after Reba’s “performance” and award. It was a low budget trainwreck with cheap special effects.
With every passing year I’m getting more out of touch with mainstream country radio and the award circuit, but last night was really bad. There where many WTF moments (that’s “who the fuck?” not “what the fuck?”) in the abbreviated time I tuned in. For example, when they were counting down the female vocalists who were the chicks bookended between T. Swift and Carrie Underwood at 4 and 3? I have never heard of them! And I can’t tell apart any of the new male talent in country music – that’s by appearance or sound.
What’s strange is they seemed to have been promoting artists like Reba and Hank Jr. – catering to fans like me – but, when I got there, I didn’t recognize anyone.
December 17, 2014 @ 11:05 pm
Agreed. By all means, I fit into the indie rock world better than I do today’s country one, yet somehow I’m still here. But, mind you, I want no part of that lifted Chevy, camouflage hat, fireball in a red solo cup culture. I’m no genius, but those folks…well they don’t seem to be the brightest if I’m honest. Life is better when you surround yourself with more fulfilling people and culture, I suppose
December 16, 2014 @ 1:15 pm
That weak joke sounds as if it was written by a ten year-old boy. Did the producer let his kid write the jokes, or is that just the audience they’re trying to reach?
December 16, 2014 @ 1:31 pm
I didn’t watch a second of it. Part of it was the fact it’s finals week and I am swamped with tests and papers to study and write, but also, let’s face it the music coming out of mainstream Nashville is completely uninspiring on so many levels.
I wish we could just stick with the couple award shows that are around and be done with it. If anything I wish something like the Americana Music awards could get picked up on something like PBS as that would be about the only award show I would be interested in.
That or an award show on a smaller network or public television that focused on independent Country, Folk, Bluegrass, etc.
As it is the market simply is not strong enough to support so many award shows, especially when the majority of them have the artists just (often poorly) performing the latest song they want to hit at radio and often the award shows idea of “mixing it up” is adding a shitty pop singer or rapper to a Bro-Country song.
December 16, 2014 @ 1:35 pm
PBS in conjunction with Austin City Limits does broadcast a highlight show of the Americana awards, and this year NPR streamed it live. I do agree it would be great if they could turn it into a live television event in the future.
December 16, 2014 @ 1:50 pm
I could see PBS or RFD-TV doing that.
December 17, 2014 @ 7:37 pm
Music City Roots will have a condenced version of the IBMA awards in March or April.
December 16, 2014 @ 2:56 pm
Not surprised. When you have Ebonic-using people hosting the show, who would wanna watch that train wreck anyway?
December 16, 2014 @ 6:18 pm
These hosts got picked because radio plays them and maybe because Scott Borchetta is the new American Idol on FOX mentor. Kellie Pickler is clearly the best choice to host any show and people have been saying she should host her own TV show ever since she was on American Idol 8 years ago, so why didn’t she or another very talented female country artist host this thing? Oh yeah this is a country radio based show and country radio totally robs her and most women. We sure don’t want to see another 2 men host another awards show. Either get a man and a woman or 2 women to even things out. Isn’t Carrie the only female country awards show host?
December 16, 2014 @ 6:38 pm
What are these awards for?
December 16, 2014 @ 8:22 pm
Apparently not much at all.
December 17, 2014 @ 5:06 am
Exactly! LOL…
December 16, 2014 @ 8:22 pm
To sell more records. Its a 2 hour embarrassing commercial that’s completely unnecessary. There’s really no such thing as an awards show for music. Being behind a record label’s massive resources and held up by auto-tune and some studio musicians while you sing a song written by a Nashville songwriter should not qualify you as something exceptional.
December 16, 2014 @ 8:31 pm
Try telling that to the bro country artists. Lol
December 17, 2014 @ 5:07 am
I was just being sarcastic…. 🙂 As usual.
December 17, 2014 @ 9:35 am
The show felt like a scene from Idiocracy with FlaGa hosting.
December 17, 2014 @ 10:17 am
What a joke for an awards show.
December 17, 2014 @ 10:52 am
I thought the ACA’s always did poorly partly because they gave so much performance time to B list acts like Randy Houser, Kip Moore, Easton Corbin and Justin Moore. This new show was able to get a lot of big names and still couldn’t pull in a crowd.
Competing with The Voice was definitely dumb as that show has the same audience as this one would. I wonder if Fox will ever accept that there doesn’t need to be 3 major country award shows.
December 17, 2014 @ 12:07 pm
I am more surprised when the rating for these kinds of ” award ” shows are announcedas going through the roof.
How in the world would so much generic -sounding music with so many generic -looking ‘artists’ and hosts on a program filled with commercials which is a commercial in itself (WTF..? ) be expected to draw ANY listeners/viewers ? That would be my question . Didn’t we reach the saturation point for the same ol same ol about 3 award shows back ? Where are the Randy Housers, the Lee Brices , the Josh Turners , the Thomson Squares ,and on and on who are NEVER seen on these shows?( Ok …I didn’t watch the whole show so in fairness maybe I missed some of the aforementioned .) For God’s sake at least break things up a bit .
BTW ..Here in Canada it was up against the THE VOICE semi-final , a Canadian Country Music Christmas show ( which was low key but featured some terrific performances from nearly everyone who is anyone here in Canada ) and a Michael Buble Christmas special . Good choice of night to air the debut ACC show .
December 17, 2014 @ 4:12 pm
the American Country Countdown radio show is a joke, Kix Brooks is a terrible host who is over-enthusiastic and acts like the world is one gigantic happy place and that nothing can go wrong ; very unrealistic. so as soon as I heard there was going to be an awards show based off Brooks’ radio show, i literally laughed out out loud. i knew it would be a joke. i’m glad i didn’t waste my time watching this trash, it’s more than predictable with the already-superstar nominees. As much as I like Florida Georgia Line, they cannot be taken seriously for even a second due to their constant country-party songs so when i heard they were hosting that was a double ousting for me to not watch. Even if Brooks would’ve hosted as originally planned, it probably would’ve been just as bad if not worse. I hope they slam the banhammer down on this joke of a show so we never have to hear about it again.
December 17, 2014 @ 7:23 pm
They should have got Swift to make out with her GF on the show then people would talk about it.
December 17, 2014 @ 10:22 pm
So many awards shows for single genre. (CMA’s/ACM’s/ACCA’s).
For such a close knit community, there seems to be a need for everyone to define themselves as separate from the pack.
December 18, 2014 @ 1:36 pm
Florida Georgia Line is like a nagging case of jock itch that should have cleared up already but it just won’t go away.
December 19, 2014 @ 7:12 pm
I guess country music is not popular these days even with big names like Florida Georgia Line. Let’s face it, America screwed over country music like Brad Paisley and America only wants mainstream like pop music and Britney Spears. Popular music like Vevo (despite country music do appear on Vevo) don’t seem to care about country music and America cannot accept country music like Tim McGraw. The only way to hear country music like George Strait is country music stations like country radio and CMT? Why can’t country music released worldwide? Country music is suppose to released worldwide because country music are popular music. But no, you have to use North America to hear country music like Blake Shelton. Why, America, why?
December 20, 2014 @ 2:09 pm
Wtf are you talkin about?
December 20, 2014 @ 10:09 am
I did not watch it.I only watch the awards shows if Loretta is on.(She’s the ONLY reason I watched part of the CMA’s).
December 22, 2014 @ 1:53 pm
And,as far as radio goes,I only listen to radio stations that play Loretta’s songs and real country music.I only watch CMT when Loretta is on.The majority of CMT programs have little or nothing to do with Country Music.